Written by Prudence Ho. This article first appeared in Bloomberg News.
Billionaire Li Ka-shing agreed to buy shares in O Luxe Holdings Ltd. for the second time in a month, a deal that would make Hong Kong’s richest man the second-largest investor in the owner of an electric-car maker. Shares of O Luxe rose.
Goldrank Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Li Ka Shing (Overseas) Foundation, agreed to buy 100 million shares at HK$1.60 each from O Luxe’s chairman, according to a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday. The price was 8 percent below the stock’s last close.
Still, O Luxe rallied as much as 6.3 percent in Hong Kong trading on Monday — and have more than doubled this year — as the company continued to attract the interest of one of the region’s most famous businessmen. Though a distributor of jewelry and watches by trade, O Luxe recently bought control of closely held Japanese electric-car maker GLM Co., which has plans to license its technology to other manufacturers including those in China.
The investment would increase Li’s stake in O Luxe, which now has a market value of about $1.3 billion, to 7.3 percent from his first investment in the company in September, when he purchased a 5.5 percent holding.
The deal comes as sales of electric vehicles surge in China, the world’s largest car market, on the back of state support, prompting global manufacturers to boost their lineups of such automobiles.